This is a very weird take. The candidate in question broke electoral law and gained an unfair advantage in the election process. The constitutional court is obligated to step in and cancel the election, as per the constitution. The decision was unanimous.
I agree that he should have lost at the voting booth, but the law is pretty clear on this subject.
Couldn't the constitutional court have acted before the election took place? Forbid that candidate from running in the first place?
The reason this looks sketchy in the first place is that it happened after they saw the election results, and one gets the feeling that if another candidate won they would not have annulled it.
He wasn't exactly super popular before the race, polling below 5% so nobody was really concerned about him, plus the court needs to be called upon to act, as they can't intervene without a complaint being lodged.
What about the unfair advantage the incumbents have? Speaking as an outside observer, this seems like a clear case of election interference - but from the big parties, not from whoever this no-name guy happens to be.
The fact that the incumbents performed poorly during the past 4 years has led to them having a lot fewer %s in the parliamentary elections, and I think it was the first time that one of the establishment parties' candidates didn't manage to pass the first leg of the presidential elections.
You setup a straw man with a loaded fabrication. No, democracy was not sacrificed at all. There will be another vote, with a now far better informed population.
A lot of posters here have a very strange sense of "free speech" as well. The notion of free speech that the US was founded on was freedom from retribution from the government. That's it. It was not that you were free from consequences from fellow citizens that don't like your speech, nor does it imply that there cannot be laws requiring opportunity for political candidates to equally inform the public.
Ironically, the US will no longer have the original notion of free speech come January, and has long had a very broken democratic system where candidates have no notion of equal air time at all.
You know elections have rules and they was clearly violated. Russia is in habit of illegally intervening with elections. Not sure how you think it should work?
If they didn't caught it before election whatever happened is a fair game? You should read more on the topic, why this ruling was made. No dangerous precedent here. Honestly, this is the opposite.
